


dead girl walking

by eutrash (AreteNike)



Series: Abandoned WIPs [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Animal Death, Gen, matts a zombie, technically pidge is also a zombie oops spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 08:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14256774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AreteNike/pseuds/eutrash
Summary: Pidge hunts for the cure that will save her zombified brother... and also, maybe, herself.(Please note this is part of my abandoned WIPs series! Everything in this series is unfinished and most likely always will be. There will be unresolved cliffhangers. You have been warned.)





	dead girl walking

**Author's Note:**

> despite the warning in the summary there i do have like NOTES on this au so if youre really really interested i can tell you more about it. but yeah its never getting continued :v

Pidge checks her phone.

It's got a couple bars, for all that means. The tower over in Haven is running but it's doubtful many others are--the only signals still working out in the wastes come from satellites. She thumbs into her messages anyway, stops on the recents list: the last text she sent her mother is visible from here.

_ Don't come home. _

A few months out, and she never got any response. Figures, really, given the world has ended.

Whatever. She shoves her phone back in her pocket and picks up the binoculars hanging against her chest instead, keeping the other hand firm on her rifle. From her vantage atop a former residential building, she scans the area. She's broadcasting on a handful of radio frequencies, satellite and otherwise; most can't figure out how to rig up the most basic of equipment to respond but that doesn't mean no one's listening. Folks come down through here all the time searching for a safe place. 

Pidge is the one to lead them to Haven. It's been that way for a while now.

Sure enough, there's movement on the horizon. Band of two, maybe three--there's a small thing that might be a pet or child, hard to say from here. Sun's getting low, she'll have to bring them to the nearest safehouse and set out for Haven in the morning.

The safehouse is clear but the area around it usually isn't no matter how much she tries to hide the scent of living flesh, so she trades the binoculars for sunglasses and picks up her nail gun--effective at close range and much quieter than the rifle--and starts picking her way down the fire escape.

Three walkers by the safehouse quickly becomes zero walkers by the safehouse. When the survivors come around the distant corner--with their dog, not a child, which is kind of a relief--she waves to them quickly before they can think she's a zombie. It happens.

"Hey!" the man shouts. Idiot. "You're alive!" He starts jogging towards her, and the woman and the dog start running too to keep up.

"You got this far yelling like that?" Pidge asks casually, folding her arms, once the guy is in adequate hearing range. He slows and bends over to pant.

"Sorry, sorry," he says. "Just haven't seen anyone alive in a while but me 'n' Nyma 'n' Beezer." He gestures behind him. Pidge assumes Beezer is the dog.

"You're in luck, then, 'cause Haven's nearby. But we're continuing this conversation inside." Pidge nods back to the safehouse, and the guy looks up at it, raising his eyebrows. It's got "SAFEHOUSE" spray painted in big letters across the front, and she snorts at the idea that he hadn't noticed until now.

Granted, he's wearing skinny jeans and a beanie that shaggy blond hair peeks out of, so if he's not a stoner he's definitely  _ some _ flavor of hipster and she's never understood their priorities. The woman, as she catches up, looks about the same. Must have brains if they're still alive, though. The dog's a golden retriever, that's nice.

"In you go," she says, pointing toward the door. "I'm gonna make sure nothing followed you, so make yourselves at home. It's clear. No power, though." That's a lie, but whatever, they don't need to know. She trots off to check their path without a backwards glance--the key is in the mailbox which is labeled in spray paint with "KEY" and a big arrow, she's pretty sure they can figure it out.

Sure enough, there's a handful of zombies on their trail; just walkers, though, none of the nasty sorts. A couple of them look really fresh though--that's a red flag. The kind of people that betray their companions tend to leave fresh walkers in their wake.

She takes down the bad ones, the ones with fatal injuries (if they weren't already dead, of course). The ones with only a bite mark or two--as far as she can tell, she's not keen on getting too close--she shepherds into a nearby department store with the rest. Rounding up the corpses is a task for later, but right now she has to get back to the survivors.

The safehouse key isn't in the mailbox when she returns, which is another red flag, but a minor one. Sometimes people forget.

...Sometimes people think zombies have the wherewithal to retrieve a key and unlock a door, which, well. That ones that can don't need a key to get in, anyway. If one of those is determined to kill you, you're fucked, probably.

She rings the bell--it's a mechanical bell, no electricity--and waits. No one answers. Yep, they probably think leaving her out here will distract the zombies or something.

No, Pidge, she tells herself. No judgments yet. Maybe they think zombies can ring the doorbell. Maybe they didn't hear it. 

Plan B, then.  She heads around the side of the house to the back; all the doors and windows here are boarded up but the shed has an old grill in it. She rolls it out and climbs up it and onto the shed, then kicks it back in and shuts the door. Easy peasy. And from here she can get onto the garage roof, and from there to one of the windows on the second floor, the one that doesn't lock. Try keeping  _ her _ out, assholes.

She gives the window a firm shove upwards, and tips in and onto the couch below. Shuts the window behind her and done. She drops her gear on the couch and stretches in relief.

"Oh, hey, you're back," the guy says when she heads downstairs and finds him in the kitchen.

"Key," she says, and holds out her hand. He blinks, then makes an exaggerated look of realization--complete with closed eyes, throwing his head back, a half-laugh, the works. Yeah, not suspicious at all.

"Sure, sorry. Forgot to put it back." He takes the key out of his pocket and puts it in her hand. She takes a moment to inspect it, make sure it's the  _ right _ key--it is, at least.

"Remember for next time," she tells him sternly, and heads out to put the key back. He trails after her.

"Will do. I take it we aren't real close to safety, then."

"A few days out, yeah." Pidge reaches out the door to slip the key back in the mailbox, then closes the door and throws all the bolts.

"I'm Rolo, by the way," he says, and holds his hand out to shake. She doesn't take it.

"Pidge. You had anyone else with you recently?"

He glances away. That's a yes. "Nah, not for a while," he says. "Parted ways with some folks about a week ago, had a disagreement 'bout which way to get here. Didn't need each others' help, anyway. Why?"

"No reason," Pidge says breezily, and heads off into the kitchen again. This time Nyma and Beezer are there, too; the dog trots happily up to meet her and she bends down in kind, an unfamiliar smile stretching her face.  _ Damn _ she misses Gunther.

"He likes you," Nyma comments. "He's not usually keen on strangers."

The dog is drooling an awful lot. Pidge's smile drops.

"Uh," she says. "You haven't let any zombies bite him, right?"

Nyma tenses. "Of course not!"

Pidge's gaze flicks up. "You let him bite any zombies?"

"Sure," Rolo says behind her. "Little guy's helped us through a lot."

Shit. Fuck. Can't Pidge have  _ one _ good thing in her life.  _ Fuck. _

With shaking hands she gently turns the dog's head and checks his eye. The yellow is creeping across his iris, almost to the pupil--as if the scent of death on his breath wasn't enough. He doesn't have much time left. She heaves a sigh and straightens.

"You know," she says slowly, "that dogs can get infected too, right?"

From the looks on their faces, they hadn't. Shit, they might be backstabbers but no one deserves this.

Nyma swallows. "Is... is he...?"

"He's got a day or two left, at most," Pidge says quietly. "But really he could turn any minute. I'm sorry--you need to say goodbye."

"Shit," says Rolo. "You sure?"

"I lost my dog the same way. Breath worse than usual, excessive drooling, yellowing eyes... I'm sure."

"Shit."

"You've got five minutes," she tells them, and goes back upstairs to get the rifle.

* * *

She leads Beezer down the street with a heavy heart.

"I'll do it somewhere you can't hear," she'd promised the two. She'd also promised to give the dog a burial, or at least not leave him for the zombies, but that one she'd intended to break from the start.

_ She's _ not going to eat the dog, she can't bring herself to do that no matter how hungry she is (and infected meat tastes pretty awful anyway), but Matt will have no such qualms. And she can't afford to be picky on his behalf.

So she brings Beezer down a familiar street, and around the back of a familiar house, next to a bulkhead that leads into a familiar basement.

"Gunther and I used to play in this yard, y'know," she tells him idly. He wags his tail. Shit.

Okay. Okay. She lifts her rifle.

She doesn't open the bulkhead until the deed is done, but when it is, there's a figure waiting at the bottom of the stairs. She rolls the dog's body over the lip of the bulkhead and down the stairs to him; he attacks it with the ferocity typical of a hungry zombie.

"I'm gonna be away for a few days, Matt," she says softly, watching him eat. "I'll come back to see you when it's done, but you're on your own for the week."

Her brother's corpse doesn't respond, just keeps eating. She closes the bulkhead and walks away.

**Author's Note:**

> rip beezer 2kwhenever i wrote this. before the holt dog was renamed to bae bae, apparently.
> 
> mad matt is fucking dead? [check out matt zine where he is very much alive](https://vldmattzine.tumblr.com/post/172400184503/preorders-for-revholt-a-vld-matt-zine-are-open)


End file.
